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ETL's avatar

Athena, I have the same thoughts when it comes to photographs. I have never had a photo album nor do I care about video or pictures of places I visit or the people in my travel group. Things, places, people are fine where they are. I think I am neurotypical but I find myself sharing experiences such as this with those who say they are psychopathic. I don't keep photographs, really! I am content right here, right now. And why do people stuff or pepper themselves in masterpieces of art and nature is beyond me. There is one me. I have no need to make copies and send my image out to the world. What a mess!

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Nana's avatar

I had a conversation about memory coding with an acquaintance who is a neuropsychologist recently. They said several interesting things. First is that emotions have two forms: emotional reactions and emotional states. One is that, a reaction, triggered by something and short-lived and another is an emotion still experienced after the initial trigger is already long irrelevant. In healthy neurotypicals emotions are experienced in the form of reactions and then forgotten, not affecting the memories too. It’s how it’s supposed to work. They added that an emotion is a mental phenomena that doesn’t have a past tense, meaning that it can only occur and be triggered in the moment. Healthy neurotypicals’ memories from what they said works like yours, but neurotypicals have an ability to get traumatized and be otherwise deeply affected, so some of their reactions turn into states and some memories get “emotionally coded”, though not literally. The reaction to such memories is triggered anew every time and isn’t engraved in the memories themselves.

As for the pictures with them in beautiful places and with friends, I didn’t know people take them to save good memories.

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